About Mazda

Mazda North American Operations, headquartered in Irvine, California, oversees Mazda's business in the US and Mexico. This includes the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles through nearly 700 dealers.

Adapting to new behavior for car purchases

Increasingly, customers are buying and researching cars online. Mazda recently decided that its website for the North American market was not sufficiently helping customers research and select the right car.

"The customer experience has grown in importance," says Ben Rounsefell, Sr. Manager, Digital, Customer Engagement at Mazda. "The level of detail required to configure and find a product is an expectation on any modern vehicle website. Before our digital transformation, the site we had was very hard to maintain. We missed a lot of opportunities to grow with industry trends."

A user-friendly platform for global and local experiences

To solve this problem, Mazda contacted its creative partner, The Garage Team Mazda, and global digital agency Mirum to begin developing a new site. At the center of the new site was the Episerver platform.

"We knew that Episerver was a pretty strong product from experience overseas," says Rounsefell. "Anything we do from a local point of view should be shareable globally. Episerver allows that flexibility."

New tools for a better customer journey

With the new site, Mazda shoppers can now easily research and select a vehicle with fewer clicks, and for the first time from mobile devices. The content is relevant and up to date, including reference materials for current owners.

"Our results were impressive," Rounsefell says. "We have much higher engagement, smooth navigation, and new features around locating a dealer from a proximity point of view that we hadn't had before."

In the first two months after the site was launched, it had almost five million unique visitors and a 200 percent improvement in engagement.

"We went from an online brochure to a mobile-driven, data-driven immersive platform," Rounsefell says. "If I was being asked to recommend Episerver, I wouldn't have a hesitation. The technology backing the project was flawless."

This website was implemented by Mirum

Mirum is a global digital agency that creates experiences that people want and businesses need. Named a visionary in the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant, Mirum helps guide brands in business transformation, experience development, and commerce activation.

Operating in 20 countries, with 46 offices and more than 2,200 professionals, Mirum is part of the J. Walter Thompson Company and WPP family.